EU air and space companies hold additive manufacturing summit at Norsk Titanium

Norsk Titanium AS (NTi), a supplier of aerospace-grade, additive manufactured, structural titanium components, hosted a European additive manufacturing summit on Dec. 1 at its Technology Center in Olso, Norway. Norsk executives granted unprecedented access to the company’s patented Rapid Plasma Deposition (RPD) process to aerospace participants of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) cooperative AMAZE (Additive Manufacturing Aiming Towards Zero Waste & Efficient Production of High-Tech Metal Products) initiative.

NTi owns and operates the only wire-based additive manufacturing factory in AMAZE, which is Europe’s largest working team on the subject of metal additive manufacturing.

The overarching goal of AMAZE is to rapidly produce large, defect-free, additive manufactured components, ideally with close to zero waste, for use in the European high-tech industries, such as aeronautics, space, nuclear fusion, automotive, and tooling. The project, launched in 2013 by David Jarvis of the ESA, is supported by nine European countries and 28 active partners, including 19 industrial companies, eight universities, and one intergovernmental agency.

The AMAZE companies had the opportunity to watch a live demonstration of NTi’s fourth-generation RPD machine produce a structural titanium spar for an aircraft manufacturer. The technology uses plasma to melt titanium wire in an inert argon atmosphere. It builds up rapidly in layers to a near net shape that requires very little finish machining.